Friday, December 18, 2009

####################INTRODUCTIONI posted my first YouTube video on the subject of The Lingering Effects of the 1997/98 El Nino about one year ago. Since then, many of my posts have dealt with the multiyear aftereffects of strong El Nino events (and the subsequent La Nina events), and about the dominant impacts of those ENSO events on the gradual increase in global temperature record since 1975. Anthony Watts of the popular science blog WattsUpWithThat has graciously co-posted many of them, and through those posts, I have reached a much larger audience. With hope of reaching an even broader group of persons interested in Global Warming, I have produced two more videos that now appear on YouTube. The videos titled Climate Studies Misrepresent The Effects Of El Nino And La Nina Events, Parts 1 and 2, start with a reference to the ClimateGate emails. That email was written by Phil Jones of the CRU and refers to one of my guest posts at WattUpWithThat. I’ve tagged the new videos with ClimateGate and Climate-Gate with hope of attracting viewers interested in the CRU emails--to illustrate that climate studies misrepresent the effects of El Nino events, and by doing so, the authors of those papers overestimate the impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

11 comments:

Anonymous
said...

If nearly all the warming is attributable to El Nino events, doesn't that still suggest that there is net heating of the oceans? So where is that coming from, if not from the residual of the radaitive balance?

Anonymous 1:37AM: During an El Nino, warm water from below the surface of the Pacific Warm Pool sloshes east where it rises to the surface. An El Nino event raises SST anomalies remote to the tropical Pacific via changes in atmospheric circulation.http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects.html

During the transition from El Nino to La Nina, a Rossby wave carries warm water west from the eastern tropical Pacific, and during the La Nina, trade winds carry the warm surface waters west. Ocean currents redistribute the warm water poleward in the Pacific and also carry it to the Indian Ocean. The increase in trade winds during the La Nina reduces Cloud Cover, which increases Downward Shortwave Radiation (visible light), which recharges the heat that had been discharged during the El Nino.http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects_26.htmland http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects.html

The end result of the El Nino and La Nina: The Pacific Warm Pool has discharged and recharged heat, and Global SST anomalies have risen.

Are you trying to make the claim that the oceans are the only environmental medium capable of storing, retaining, and releasing the sun's heat energy over somke period of time?

Why do you purposely choose to ignore the effects of atmospheric water vapor and other trace greenhouse gases and the resultant retention of heat energy in the atmosphere? Without these atmospheric trace gases, the earth's temperature would be 33C (59F) cooler, all due to the retention of heat energy that would otherwise be lost into space.

The storage and time release of the same solar heat energy that you are trying to make into an ocean only property also goes on in the atmosphere as well.

It's the long-term trend lines that show the true nature of the storage and release of the heat energy both in the ocean and in the atmosphere and not the short-term cyclical fluctuations.

The oceans are just able to moderate those fluctuations better as they responds more slowly to the more rapid changes going on in the atmosphere, thus the apparent lag times and step increases/decreases.

Dennis H: Regarding your 5:37PM comment, using the graphs in this post...http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html...please illustrate the greenhouse gas warming of the oceans.

Dennis: As a follow-up, the GISS Model E projections assumed that the rise in OHC over the past decade or so of the 20th century were the result of greenhouse gas warming. This is why the actual rise in OHC since 2003 has fallen far short of GISS projections. Refer to:http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/nodc-corrections-to-ocean-heat-content.html

As you stated in your postings at ACCU Weather, that the upper layer of the oceans can only be warmed through an increase in short-wave radiation. Since the variation in solar radiation reaching the earth is minuscule at best, the only way an increased level of solar radiation can reach the ocean and cause the warming is through reduced cloud cover.

Latest satellite radiation data shows that cloud cover has been decreasing over the last few decades:http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndClouds.htm

Using atmospheric models, Penn State researchers indicated that a reduced cloud condensation nuclei during the Cretaceous Period, due to the reduction in ocean plant material, helped to increase the amount of solar radiation reaching the ocean surface. During the Cretaceous Period, CO2 concentrations were in the 1,200 ppm range, global temperatures were around 20C (5.8C warmer than today), and cloud cover was estimated to be in the 55 percent area (a 12 percent reduction from 1970 levels):http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/south-asia/reduction-in-cloud-cover-amplified-dino-era-global-warming_10036728.html

Developing an admittedly simple linear relationship of CO2 concentrations and reduced cloud cover based on current satellite observations and the 12 percent reduction in cloud cover from current levels for the Cretaceous Period, the amount of CO2 increase since 1970 can easily account for the observed general 1.3 percent reduction in cloud cover and the increased amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface (including the ocean's upper layers) during this 39-year period.

So besides water vapor, CO2 and other trace amounts of greenhouse gases storing additional solar heat energy in the atmosphere, the added relationship of reduced cloud nuclei during warming atmospheres can also be shown to increase the amount of heat energy reaching the upper ocean layers through reduced cloud cover.

Yes there are feedback mechanisms within the ocean and lower atmospheric layers that can create short-term cyclical relationships with ocean temperatures and cloud cover, but it is the long term trends of heat storage in both the atmosphere and the oceans that are at issue here and not just the short-term cyclical patterns created by these feedbacks.

Dennis: You wrote, "Since the variation in solar radiation reaching the earth is minuscule at best, the only way an increased level of solar radiation can reach the ocean and cause the warming is through reduced cloud cover."

And as I've discussed in a post linked above, the reduction in cloud cover can result in a 25 watt/meter^2 increase in Downward Shortwave Radiation during an ENSO event, so your reliance on global variability is falling far short of what has already been discussed.Here's a link to the post once again:http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects_26.html

Also read the first in the series for the factors that cause SST to vary outside of the tropical Pacific during an El Nino event:http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects.htmland:http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects.html

Comment Policy, SST Posts, and Notes

Comments that are political in nature or that have nothing to do with the post will be deleted.####The Smith and Reynolds SST Posts DOES NOT LIST ALL SST POSTS. I stopped using ERSST.v2 data for SST when NOAA deleted it from NOMADS early in 2009.

Please use the search feature in the upper left-hand corner of the page for posts on specific subjects.####NOTE: I’ve discovered that some of the links to older posts provide blank pages. While it’s possible to access that post by scrolling through the history, that’s time consuming. There’s a quick fix for the problem, so if you run into an absent post, please advise me. Thanks.####If you use the graphs, please cite or link to the address of the blog post or this website.